A perpetuum mobile of data – the essence of the IT revolution

The essence of the Information Technology revolution, the engine that propels it, is the reality in todays' information systems, of data bring about more and more data in a closed self-amplifying loop: the data invite applications, applications bring users, users attract new service ideas, new services create more operations & management data, and so forth. 

Data is the raw materials of the information industry, understanding that makes one appreciate the huge opportunity of free materials that this industry enjoys (remark: of organization information infrastructure does cost, but it is regarded as a general investment or overhead).      

The problem with the virtual data assets is that most of them are intangible, i.e. do not have specific registered value in the accountancy. Hence managements may miss their existence. As long as the organization's competitors are sleepy, the waste does not really hurt and usually goes unnoticed by managements. But, the minute somebody else in the branch is starting to use information for strategic advantage, the rules of game are changing, forever.

For example, the story of the meteoric rise of Netflix to world leadership in movies supply by the web. Prior to the foundation of Netflix on 1997, the market was dominated by Blockbuster that was not inclined to adopt advanced technologies, in contrary to Netflix that was quick to employ new techniques and data from operations, for their "agile" business development. Blockbuster simply stayed behind. They did not have much chance to close the widening gap. It does not help in this case, even if a company is big, strong, reputable and internationally spread as Blockbuster was.

Edith Ohri
Home of GT data mining 
Sep.2016